Our View: Clean water basic service for any town

It's hard to believe that quite a few northeastern Louisiana communities, many perched on the banks of rivers, bayous and lakes and sitting atop an aquifer, have problems obtaining clean water.

But they do.

Declining tax bases and decaying infrastructure have created issues more costly than some communities can afford to address or some private system owners are able to repair. It seems that every week, we receive boil notices for some water system in the region.

That's understandable when you consider the state Department of Health and Hospitals monitors more than 1,400 water systems. State records show the state monitors 56 systems in Ouachita Parish alone.

In Ferriday, residents soon will have a stable source of clean drinking water after years of intermittent outages and occasionally having to draw water from a National Guard tank during emergencies.

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., traveled to Ferriday on Monday to celebrate the groundbreaking for a new $7 million water system that will be completed in 2016.

"No community in America should have to wait this long for clean drinking water," Landrieu said. "This is really a groundbreaking - literally and figuratively - for the town of Ferriday."

Landrieu helped the town secure a $5 million grant for the new system through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development. That office administers a loan and grant program helps smaller communities upgrade or replace their systems.

The new system in Ferriday will be built in four phases, the first of which has already been completed with a new ground storage tank.

"Clean water is about as basic as you can get," Landrieu siad. "It's really hard to develop an economic future for a town without that basic need."

That is certainly true. Fulfilling that need in Ferriday will help keep that community viable for years to come.

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Our View: Clean water basic service for any town

It's hard to believe that quite a few northeastern Louisiana communities, many perched on the banks of rivers, bayous and lakes and sitting atop an aquifer, have problems obtaining clean water.